Hungerford land sale challenged
Southern Poverty Law Center considering lawsuit over Orange school board’s plans
If the Orange County school board continues with its plan to sell 100 acres of land in Eatonville amid public outcry, it could violate the civil rights of the historic Black town’s residents, leading to gentrification and displacement, a letter written by an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center argued.
Lynda Hasberry, an SPLC spokesperson who shared the letter with the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday, in an email said the organization “is considering next steps which could include an administrative Title VI complaint to the federal government, or a lawsuit.”
In the letter dated Feb. 14, the civil rights organization urged Orange County Public Schools to cancel the sale of the property that once housed the Robert F. Hungerford Normal and Industrial School, which served to educate Black students when schools were still legally segregated.
OCPS purchased the school property for a fraction of its value after a 1952 state Supreme Court decision granted it ownership of 300 acres of land where the school campus was located. Since then, OCPS closed and demolished the high school, built Hungerford Elementary School and sold much of the land. The final 100 acres are now set to be sold to a developer on March 31, earning the school board $10 million.
“OCPS is profiting off a system of segregation and discrimination that it actively participated in to create the historical and current conditions of unequal access to land, power, and education on the basis of race that is at the core of this current dispute over the Hungerford property,” the letter said.
In an unsigned statement, an
OCPS spokesperson said the district is “proceeding with the sale” and “will not speculate about circumstances which may or may not occur in the future.” The district, its statement said, “encourages the town of Eatonville to partner with purchaser to make certain the history of the Town is preserved.”
SPLC argued that OCPS should cancel the sale and create a land trust so the town can decide the best use of the property, a plan supported by many residents and elected officials.
In a previous statement to the Orlando Sentinel dated Feb. 17, OCPS spokesperson Lauren Roth said “it would be irresponsible for the district to give away this property,” but SPLC pointed out the school board has already gifted some of the land to the town.
In 2001, a portion of the Hungerford land was donated to the town to build a public library, according to a timeline of events provided by OCPS.
In the letter, SPLC criticized the school district’s choice to close Hungerford high school in 2009, then spend the next decade building new schools. According to the letter, OCPS built 51 new schools from 2011 to 2019, making up 39% of new schools built in the state in that time period.
The letter went on to criticize the land deal between OCPS and the town should the sale continue as planned. Under the purchase agreement, the land is set to be sold for $14.6 million. Of that, OCPS would get $10 million and the remainder —$4.6 million — would go to the town.
SPLC argues that the property is worth more than the sale price but OCPS is not incentivized to sell for a high price because it would still make only $10 million based on the contract.
It also argued that the amount the town would actually get would likely be far less, as the agreement also said OCPS is entitled to the reimbursement of costs that have yet to be calculated related to land maintenance since 2015 and a $1 million reimbursement for money OCPS agreed to pay to remove a deed restriction that stipulated that the land must be used for education purposes.
“Under the contract, OCPS’s profits are therefore significantly higher than the Town of Eatonville’s, to the detriment of its residents,” the letter said. “Further, under the terms of the contract, OCPS takes a fixed amount off the top of the sales price — no matter the amount. Therefore, OCPS’s decision to sell this property, which sits in one of the hottest real estate markets in the country, for well below market value only harms Eatonville and not OCPS, who will get paid the same either way.”
SPLC said the land sale is part of “a 75-year history of OCPS decisions motivated by discrimination against the Black students and residents of the Eatonville community.”
The also letter shared concerns about the development planned for the land. In Eatonville, the median income for all residents is less than $30,000 per year. Among renters, the median income is even lower.
The average cost of rent in Eatonville is already nearly double what would be considered affordable for residents without being burdensome according to standards set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Most of the 350 rental units planned for the site, which would also add retail and civic space, would be even more expensive.
This kind of project is a catalyst for gentrification and displacement and OCPS should never have accepted it, the letter said.
“By selecting this development proposal, or others like it in the future, OCPS is knowingly allowing hundreds of houses to be built that are unavailable because they are unaffordable to the current residents of Eatonville, the vast majority of whom are Black,” the letter said. “This is discriminatory.”